Is it Boring in Bradenton? Let's See What You Think!

So after the VA trip, things settled down into somewhat of a routine...Sparky is subbing a LOT and really loving it. Kids say the darnedest things. She had a 5 week job in second grade and it was with a  high functioning class, a class full of very smart, great thinkers, and it was a ball! So that kept her busy all of January and into February. Eldy is playing golf at least two to three times a week, so he's keeping busy, too....

When Sparky isn't subbing, she's riding her bike....15-20 miles two to three times a week. Now, that might seem impressive, but Sparky stops a lot to take photos. When she IS riding, however, she boogies....A pair of sandhill cranes sat on a nest for most of February, and the first week of March, they hatched two little ones. March is prime time for sandhill crane hatching, especially early in the month....Sparky knew they had hatched after missing a couple of days at the marsh due to work, because of the small crowd of amateur photographers that descended on the marsh with their whopper lenses...Sparky used to have a Canon Rebel SLR with two lenses, but the darn thing was SO bulky, and every time she saw a cool shot, she had the wrong lens screwed on, so after trying and trying to like the camera for about a year, she decided to go with a Canon point and shoot, the SX530 with 50X zoom. She can just throw it over her shoulder and go. She hears there is a Nikon P900 with 85X zoom or something like that, but she's pretty happy with the one she has. And here's the kind of photos she gets with it....She's VERY happy with it.....Here the parents are changing nest guarding duties...off goes one to eat, and the other one comes on duty....

And here are the little cuties. They are about four days old in these photos...Sparky apologizes for the watermark, she has decided to start marking her photos after getting a bunch of them chosen over the past year for the local weekly newspaper, Your Observer. Time to get serious about submitting some photos in some contests, maybe....

Chicks and mama's legs.....

And here is Sparky's favorite.....

Cranes are not all that Sparky sees on her rides...Always fascinated with bees among the beautiful blossoms here in Bradenton, Sparky likes to try and capture them in the flowers and buds. Her favorite bee shot is this one....This was taken with an iPhone 6S. Sparky uses her phone for 99% of the close up nature shots.

Sparky likes to try and capture the big shore and wading birds close up, too....Love this anhinga eye....This one is back to the Canon point and shoot.

And that's just one bike ride on a good day.....See you soon...More photos and blog coming about the Venice Rookery this week...stay tuned....We told you we've been busy! :-)

"Are you my mama?"

                                                            Sparky and Eldo

Have You Ever Noticed?....

That the great white egret (or great white heron, Sparky can't remember which) has a green banding around its eyes and the anhinga has a quite bright green ring around its eyes as well? The anhinga is a male in breeding plumage.....

The bark pattern on a tree philodendron? They look like eyes with eyelashes.....

How a wood stork sits?  On the "knee" joints! With the feet in "tippy toe" position!

How cormorants hang out with pelicans and possibly herd fish together? Sparky saw a flock of 85 white pelicans migrating through Lakewood Ranch the other day and a flock of at least 40 cormorants hanging with them. They seemed to be fishing together. It seemed the cormorants were diving towards the bottom, pushing the fish upwards, and they were both benefitting from the fish coming to the surface. Along the shores of the pond where the pelicans were nearby fishing, were 6 Great Blue herons, and they were NOT comfortable with the crowd of pelicans there. Sparky saw one Great Blue back away as the pelicans herded fish towards the shore. The birds on shore kept a watchful distance until the pelicans moved away.

Ever noticed.....why it's so difficult it is to sneak up on turtles? Sparky can do it in a kayak, but not while walking along a sidewalk...If she takes just one or two steps towards a group of sunning turtles on a pond bank at a distance of at LEAST 100 yards or more, PLOP! PLOP! PLOP! into the water they go....Can they feel the ground vibrations? (Sparky, you DO have heavy feet some times, explains E.) Can they really see that far? But look how close Sparky can get while in the kayak....

How many bees are on a bottlebrush tree when they are budding and blooming? HUNDREDS!

How often cranes' heads are in the upside down position as they clean their feathers?

What's under your feet in some places? Sarasota has some beautiful sidewalk tile mosaics....

How symmetrical nature is?

Just wondering.........  :-)

RVing and Nature in the Suburbs

For my still RVing friends...Saw this on Facebook, shared by Laurie Owens, and just had to share here...

Top 25 signs that you live in a RV! 

You might live in an RV if… 
1) Your GPS is your best friend! 
2) You NEVER know where items are in the grocery store. 
3) You dump your own sewage and it is no big deal.
4) Your family has to ask you where you are when they call.
5) You keep both winter and summer wardrobes because you don’t know where you will end up.
6) You know what snowbirds are and have seen them in their natural habitat.
7) Your HOME has wheels.
 You blog so that YOU will remember where you have been!
9) You look in your pantry and see that you have cereal from New Jersey, pasta from Texas, canned goods from Alabama and crackers from California.
10) You are always the new guy in town
11) You know where to find the best, most reliable internet.
12) You own very little and are proud of that!
13) You follow the warm weather.
14) You hang pictures and decoration on the wall with velcro.
15) You don’t own any figurines or other cutesy stuff that sits on countertops.
16) You have slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
17) You meet up with a family in Virginia that you met in California!
18) You remember friends by what state you met them in!
19) You grocery shop every three days because your refrigerator is so small.
20) You have been to more museums, aquariums, national parks, monuments and zoos than you can remember.
21) You have often “pulled chocks”.
22) You look confused when someone asks you “where are you from?”
23) You get your mail 2-3 weeks late regularly from your mail forwarding service. 
24) You have witnessed your toilet “burping” at you.
25) You crave adventure and can not wait to see what is around the next corner!

Guess I can blame #19 for going to the grocery so much! 

courtesy of the internet

Another update on the turtles, this time green sea turtles....Two years ago, only 19 green turtles nested on the beaches in the area. This year there were 104 turtle nests from Manasota Key to Anna Maria Island. Green sea turtles are having one of the best years ever as far as nesting goes and Sarasota County is the main spot for them. Cool! The east coast of Florida has an even higher concentration of green sea turtles...We have been to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge south of Melbourne, FL, and so have many other blogging friends. The Carr refuge has more than 13,000 (!) green turtle nests this year!

Most sea turtles are listed as endangered, which means at the brink of becoming extinct and loggerheads are considered "threatened", which means they COULD becoming extinct in the near future.

Loggerheads are much more common than green turtles in Florida. Green turtles are larger than most turtle species, with an average weight of 350 pounds, and they have a very distinctive white underbelly. The green turtle nests look a lot different than the loggerhead nests, and have been compared to a grenade going off as far as how they look.

The volunteers who walk the beaches in the predawn hours looks for signs of hatched nests. Every hatched nest is excavated three days later to record the number of eggs and to look for little hatchlings that didn't make it out. Sparky wants to sign up for turtle patrol! But it means getting up at 5:00 AM, which is just a WEE bit early for her! And it's a very popular retiree volunteer project, they might not need any....the end of October is the end of turtle nesting season, so Sparky might sign up for next year....

And here's a bit of nature in our own backyard, so to speak...just down the street, a half block from our house, we saw this today....hanging out in the pond on our street....

Along with an anhinga, also called the "snakebird" or "American darter"....The females have brown necks...

If you get to close, the female will started posturing, hissing, and swelling her throat to scare you away....But Sparky was more interested in the gator, of course!

This gator was a lot bigger than little Gertie, who had been in the pond a couple of weeks before...Maybe this was her daddy or her mama!

Sparky just loves seeing these gators right in our very own neighborhood. No need to go to Myakka State Park to see the gators, we have 'em right here! Although Sparky still wants to visit the Deep Hole in Myakka. That's a two mile hike into the park interior and two miles back out on foot. She'll have to wait till November when it will be drier on the park grounds. Now, you'd have to swim to the hole, no thank you! (just kidding)...However, the park is severely flooded from the ten inches rain in two days this week so it will be awhile before Sparky heads over there...

And here's a pair of cranes right in our yard. They came within a couple of feet of Sparky, so she plopped down on the grass to get some photos..

This sandhill crane was trying to get some itchy feathers off his back....He's got one in his beak at the moment....

And that's all the nature in our neighborhood for today....See you down the road a bit......thanks for visiting with us now and then....